Comrades, I have had occasion—perhaps too much occasion—to participate in elections: in party elections following struggles between various groups and currents, and even factions; and in the most heated forms of struggle, arranged with such mutual oversight that no vote in any party cell was considered lawful unless representatives of both factions were present with written records and counted the votes cast—but we have never applied the principle of proportionality in selecting leading bodies—the Provincial Committee, the Moscow Committee, or the Central Committee. When two groups, two currents, or factions struggle in an election, then in order to convene a party conference as a decisive body, or a party congress, proportional representation is necessary. But proportional representation for creating an executive body conducting practical work—this has never been applied and can scarcely be considered correct. It seems to me that the previous speaker has already himself departed from the principle of proportionality in this regard, when together with Ignatov he declared that the merit of the list they proposed consisted in putting forward eleven, as he said. I am not in a position to verify eleven out of 38, and I think the concession should have been greater than what the immediate majority of the assembly, or that group considering itself supporters of the Moscow Committee, would have desired. I have already expounded the motives for this view, but the principal thing must be to ensure now the selection of persons. Most of the comrades standing on the list are unknown to me, but to you, who hold the decisive votes at this conference, of course all the comrades are known, and I think that you will undoubtedly be guided by the consideration that through the selection of comrades personally known to you, you should create a group capable of conducting harmonious work, in which everything healthy contained in any party current—whether formally organized or not yet organized, or remaining in some respects still undefined—should find its expression, but such that as a whole it would be a group directing practical policy, not representing proportionally the shades of opinion of this assembly, but conducting vigorous work—struggle against our enemies internal and external in the spirit of the conference's decision, with the calculation that there would be no grounds for discord and no inconsistencies. That is why the decisive consideration must be your knowledge, members of the conference, of each candidate personally, and preference for the group regarding which there is assurance of harmonious work, rather than that principle of proportionality in elections to an executive body which has never been applied and can scarcely be considered correct to apply now.

First published in 1952 in the 4th edition of the Collected Works of V. I. Lenin, vol. 31

Printed from the stenographic record